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Ralph Waldo Emerson (search for this): chapter 2
n's definition, which truly raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity. All else is reason (or reasoning) and history (or narrative). Where does literature find its source? Not in thought or feeling alone, else we should look to the cradle for our literature. Not even in the first impulses of speech; the cradle supplies those, and so, in maturer life, do the street, the railway, the shop. Mere language is not a deliberate creation, but begins in an impulse; and those who, like Emerson, have excelled in its use have long since admitted that language, as such, is the product of the people at large, not of the student. But the word literature implies that another step has been taken. Language is but the instrument of literature. Literature involves not merely impulse, but structure; it goes beyond the word and reaches the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line. Its foundation is thought, but it goes farther and seeks to utter thought in continuous and symmet
Bacon (search for this): chapter 2
such minor mention as their literary merit appears to warrant. Pure literature. But it is time, you may say, to define more specifically what literature is. No definition of it ever yet given has surpassed that magnificent Latin sentence of Bacon's which one marvels never to have seen quoted among the too scanty evidences that he wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare :-- It [literature] hath something divine in it, because it raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity, by conforming the show of things to the desires of the soul, instead of subjecting the soul to external things, as reason and history do. De Augmentis, Book II. It is only literature then, in Bacon's definition, which truly raises the mind and hurries it into sublimity. All else is reason (or reasoning) and history (or narrative). Where does literature find its source? Not in thought or feeling alone, else we should look to the cradle for our literature. Not even in the first impulses of
Elizabethan English (search for this): chapter 2
their writing matter? The answer to this question depends upon what we mean by Americanism. Until the very outbreak of the Revolution there were few persons in the American colonies who were not, in sentiment as well as in mental inheritance, English. England was home to them, as it is now to the British Canadian or Australian. Circumstances were of course bringing about a gradual divergence in manners and in special sympathies between the colonist of Massachusetts or Virginia and the Engl only. We may see in it also the impulse to expression which, ultimately developed, creates literature. ProfessorWendell says truly of Mather that he frequently wrote with a rhythmical beauty which recalls the enthusiastic spontaneity of Elizabethan English, so different from the English which came after the Civil War. It is when a Puritan clergyman ceases to be theological that he is most apt to touch our hearts and delight our ears. We find in Mather, for instance, this rhythmical beauty
William Ellery Channing (search for this): chapter 2
at he influenced later American writing, good or bad. The situation is very different with Anne Bradstreet, who, indeed, represents a second step toward a type of writing which should be in some sense American in quality as well as in birthplace. Though born in England, she became absolutely identified with American thought and life, exerted an immense influence in her day, and was the ancestor of five especially intellectual families in New England, counting among her descendants William Ellery Channing, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Henry Dana, Wendell Phillips, and Andrews Norton. She was born in 1612 of Puritan stock, her father being steward of the estates of the Puritan nobleman, the Earl of Lincoln. She was married at sixteen and came to America with her husband, Governor Bradstreet, in 1630. It is evident that, in spite of her Puritan sense of duty, she could not leave England for the raw life of the colonies without a pang. After a time, she wrote many years later, I c
Americans (search for this): chapter 2
toward the sane and cheerful recognition of the close relation which has always existed between American writing and English writing; and toward a careful weighing of the American authors in whom we properly take pride, upon the same scales which have served us in determining the value of British authors. With such ends in view, the present book will attempt, not to be a literary history of America, but simply to give a connected account of the pure literature which has been produced by Americans. It will not assume to be in any sense a minute literary cyclopedia of this work, but will rather attempt to select, as time selects, the best or representative names of each period in its course. The intrinsic literary importance of these writers will be considered, rather than their merely historical importance. Many minor names, therefore, which might properly be included in a summary of respectable books hitherto produced in America are here omitted altogether; and others are given
Anne Bradstreet (search for this): chapter 2
dentified with American thought and life, exerted an immense influence in her day, and was the ancestor of five especially intellectual families in New England, counting among her descendants William Ellery Channing, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Henry Dana, Wendell Phillips, and Andrews Norton. She was born in 1612 of Puritan stock, her father being steward of the estates of the Puritan nobleman, the Earl of Lincoln. She was married at sixteen and came to America with her husband, Governor Bradstreet, in 1630. It is evident that, in spite of her Puritan sense of duty, she could not leave England for the raw life of the colonies without a pang. After a time, she wrote many years later, I changed my condition and was married, and came into this country, where I found a new world and new manners, at which my heart rose. But after I was convinced it was the way of God, I submitted to it. She was of delicate constitution and refined instincts, and was to become the mother of eight
Pope (search for this): chapter 2
ses thither to repair; Entreat them gently; train them to that air, he urges. It was a rude air. To the ordinary privations of the pioneer, and the wearing routine of official duties, were added the sudden horrors of the James River massacre (March, 1622), and the stress of the troubled days which followed. Yet when Sandys returned to England in 1625, he brought with him the ten books which completed his version of the Metamorphoses. This translation lived to be much admired by Dryden and Pope, and, what is more important, undoubtedly had great influence upon their method of versification. The not altogether admirable distinction, therefore, belongs to Sandys of having laid the foundation for the form of heroic couplet which became a blight upon English poetry in the eighteenth century. At all events, the accident of his having lived for a time in America gives us a very shadowy claim upon him as an American writer. Anne Bradstreet. Even from the point of view of the litera
Thomas Shepard (search for this): chapter 2
se to expression which, ultimately developed, creates literature. ProfessorWendell says truly of Mather that he frequently wrote with a rhythmical beauty which recalls the enthusiastic spontaneity of Elizabethan English, so different from the English which came after the Civil War. It is when a Puritan clergyman ceases to be theological that he is most apt to touch our hearts and delight our ears. We find in Mather, for instance, this rhythmical beauty when he describes the career of Thomas Shepard, the first minister of Cambridge, as a trembling walk with God, or gives this picture (1702) of what he calls The conversation of gentlemen : There seems no need of adding anything but this, that when gentlemen occasionally meet together, why should not their conversation correspond with their superior station? Methinks they should deem it beneath persons of their quality to employ the conversation on trifling impertinences, or in such a way that, if it were secretly taken in shor
Anne Bradstreet (search for this): chapter 2
ived for a time in America gives us a very shadowy claim upon him as an American writer. Anne Bradstreet. Even from the point of view of the literary historian, the work of Sandys is of little hat he influenced later American writing, good or bad. The situation is very different with Anne Bradstreet, who, indeed, represents a second step toward a type of writing which should be in some senhose name is grav'd in the white stone Shall last and shine when all of these are gone. Anne Bradstreet had the most genuinely poetic gift among our Puritan writers of verse. These formed, howevhis grim sermons to a taking jingle. Michael Wigglesworth. The writer who better than Anne Bradstreet or any one else represents this class, is Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705). His most famousr true this may be of Mather at his worst, it is certain that at times he did succeed, like Anne Bradstreet, in forgetting his artifice, and in producing passages of noble prose. Professor William J
Gilbert Stuart (search for this): chapter 2
engravers in New York, are based on the principle he laid down. Its most triumphant application is that recorded by Gilbert Stuart. While he was in London the painter had a call from an Irishman who had become, through some lucky speculation, the possessor of a castle, and who appealed to Stuart to provide him with a family portrait gallery. Stuart naturally supposed that there were miniatures or pictures of some kind which he might follow, but on arriving at the castle he found there was nStuart naturally supposed that there were miniatures or pictures of some kind which he might follow, but on arriving at the castle he found there was nothing of the sort. Then how am I to paint your ancestors, if you have no ancestors? he asked in some indignation. Nothing is easier, said the Irishman; you have only to paint me the ancestors that I ought to have had. The proposal struck Stuart's sense of humor, and he went to work, soon producing a series of knights in armor, judges in bushy wigs, and fine ladies with nosegays and lambs, to the perfect satisfaction of his patron. Here was Slender's fine conception literally carried
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